Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD)
Emotional Behavioral Disorder
As children go through various stages of life, they are met with different emotional, behavioral, and mental issues that they have to overcome. It is not always easy as some become conditions that last their entire lifetime. These issues are referred to as disorders. These issues may cause problems between family members, schools, and members of the community (McCurdy et al., 2016). Environmental factors influence how the children suffering from these disorders respond to stimuli around them. They can either make them calm or trigger them. This condition is one of the common issues faced by children. This paper discusses the characteristics of EBD and the effect it has on children’s learning experience and social interactions.it also discusses its relationship with other known disabilities.
Disability Characteristics
According to the Individual Disability Education Act (IDEA), EBD is characterized by the following over a certain period (Kennedy, 2014). The individuals show an inability to learn, which has no sensory, health, or intellectual explanation. The individuals also struggle to interact with others and fail to create and maintain meaningful relationships with their peers, family, and teachers. They exhibit inappropriate behaviors or unwarranted feelings, even when they are around familiar environments. The individuals develop a persistent mood of sadness or despair. The individuals also frequently develop physical symptoms and insecurities that are associated with their academic and personal problems (Kennedy, 2014). The definition of EBD does not include socially maladjusted individuals.
Individuals suffering are susceptible to other disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, and opposition defiant disorder. According to the IDEA guidelines on emotional disturbance, not every child that suffers from EBD requires special education to coop with the condition (The individual acts depict that their disorders do not affect the educational progress of the children. Although, parents may seek the help of a specialist to determine the best way of dealing with their children’s disorder.
Research conducted on EBD shows that about 6 to 10 percent of students within the school-going bracket exhibit EBD indicators. However, only 1 percent of these students are diagnosed with EBD and gain access to special education under IDEA guidelines (Hallahan et al., 2018). Boys have mostly been diagnosed with EBD compared to girls. EBD is diagnosed when a child shows unusual patterns such as anxiety, mood, depression, or unpredictable feelings or poor communication.
Children suffering from EBD struggles with their academics as they have a typical low or average Intelligent Quotient. They also have a problem putting words together when reading, spelling them out, and while writing. EBD affects their ability to calculate and solve simple math problems. These struggles easily frustrate them, leading to them not completing assigned tasks (Kennedy, 2014). In situations that the child is not receiving special education, they fall behind their peers. The teachers have to monitor their performance to determine how to help them keep up with the rest.
EBD also has social implications as individuals tend to get easily frustrated and act out consistently. They exhibit externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Externalizing behaviors include yelling, acting out, and extreme aggressiveness, while internalizing behaviors include depression. Externalizing behaviors are visible to the individual and the people around them while internalizing behaviors are not visible and can go unnoticed for a while. Children (Kennedy, 2014). The children find it hard to create a new relationship or express their emotions around people. They do not easily play with their peers or share their possessions, such as toys. New changes and routines agitate them, and they take a longer time to adapt to new environments (McCurdy et al., 2016). In the long term, these children record poor grades in exams while some resort to dropping out of school. It may also lead them to drug and substance abuse or involved in a crime that gets them booked into the justice system.
Learning Needs
A teacher dealing with a class that has students with EBD need should develop efficient classroom management styles. Setting up a system that addresses challenges faced by these children helps them improve in their learning process (McCurdy et al., 2016). The teachers can create rules that help children pay more attention in class and keep up with their peers. EBD is mostly common in children, but if not well addressed, it can affect a person as an adult, and as a result of the is learning EBD becomes essential for learning.
Teaching Strategies
Teachers will find it easier to address these children’s challenges if they formulate strategies according to their needs. The first strategy is classroom management. When a classroom has more structure in its setting, it promotes the proper academic and social behaviors of the children. Teachers also get an opportunity to direct more activities that the children can emulate since the physical arrangement of the class reduces the distractions around the students. Teachers in these settings usually have 3 to 5 behavioral expectations posted around the classroom, which the students can easily view (Kennedy, 2014). Using class management, a teacher can teach behaviors, review the impact on the students, and reinforce the behavior to students. The students take up these behaviors and practice them regularly in due time.
Active supervision is another strategy used in teaching students with EBD. It is applicable in both classroom and non-classroom settings (Kennedy, 2014). This strategy positively influences student behavior and reduce the number of unwarranted incidents as teachers can keep a close eye on what activities the students are involved in during the class time.
Opportunities to Respond (OTR) is used to encourage students to participate in class actively. The teacher embeds activities that cue the students to get involved once the instruction is given. The students can give their responses orally or using cards or clickers. Teachers can also use explicit statements to give students feedback and praise them when they meet specific anticipations (Kennedy, 2014). Students respond to praises more when they have a personal touch, so teachers use full statements and refer to the student by name.
Several students may require secondary interventions to gain more academically. Teachers use check-in and check-out (CICO) system to monitor such students. The system involves frequent feedback throughout the entire day, from the mentor to the student. It is mostly used for students who experience unsuitable and mild behaviors. The mentors give the students more attention and review their goals for the day as they give feedback (Kennedy, 2014).
In some cases, they use daily progress reports to highlight the student’s performance and provide corrective feedback. During check-out, the teachers develop a graph from the daily goals that the student can even take home for the parents to check and sign. Involving parents in children’s development is essential to their growth.
When a student is unable to respond positively to primary and secondary interventions, teachers resort to tertiary interventions such as the Individualized Education Plan (IEP). A Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) is mostly used (Kennedy, 2014). The assessment is evidence-based, and it follows several steps to get an outcome. The first step involves defining the problem behavior. It helps to determine the problem behavior and defines it using objective and observable language. Once the behavior is determined, the next step is to determine the function of the behavior. The function can be determined through direct observations, interviews, and rating scales (Hallahan et al., 2018). Direct observations identify the reason for the occurrence of the behavior and why it keeps occurring. Interviewing people close to the student provides more valuable insight into the behavior they exhibit, and rating scales verify and confirm the functional behavior. After the information is collected, a function matrix can be developed to understand the purpose of the purpose and determine the best interventions to be used.
The Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs) developed can then be used to teach the students new and acceptable behaviors (Hallahan et al., 2018). The teachers select the best replacement behaviors and intervention strategies to be used. In some instances, the teacher may choose to alter the consequences of the behavior or the environment the student does this practice. They also record data throughout the process to monitor and evaluate the student’s progress. Some of the accommodations and modifications include: allocating private positions for students to work and calm down, sitting students in areas with minimal distractions, breaking the task into chunk assignments, and grouping of students or assigning different tasks. Students with EBD struggle in their academics and may require the teacher to put more effort into supporting them. Teachers may read aloud to them and teach them more social skills. These skills can be modeled into students with more practice in an organized and control environment.
Lifespan Issues
A person can experience EBD very early in their lives. About 1 percent of the cases are diagnosed, which leaves the other percentage going through their lives, unaware of what they are suffering from (Kennedy, 2014). EBD establishes an unusual pattern in children in which parents should monitor and seek medical advice from professionals if they persist. If a child is diagnosed with EBD at a young age, it is vital to address the issue and seek treatment to avoid the disorder persisting into adulthood. The community plays a role in the treatment of kids with EBD. They can show support for the family, and in some cases, they may bring attention to the disorder before it is diagnosed. Some members of the community may stigmatize children with EBD, which is detrimental to their health (Hallahan et al., 2018). Children with EBD are irritable and respond proactively to situations around them, so this may trigger an adverse reaction.
A person properly diagnosed and treated for EBD can live out their healthy life and even seek employment. Several students get enrolled in regular public schools while continuing with their treatment. Special schools and teachers can be used to continue treating students who are more delicate than others. A person suffering from EBD may be neglected as they become older as it becomes harder to treat them. Their education level is affected since it is difficult to develop programs to address their challenges (Hallahan et al., 2018). This makes it harder for them to get employment or be independent, subjecting them to a lifetime with interventions.
People with EBD depend on their families to navigate through life. While most interventions are carried out by professionals and teachers, families are also responsible for ensuring the children maintain their training and practices on acceptable behavior. As explained by Dr. Robert Reynolds, parents need to learn how to handle their children while at home, since certain behaviors may seem foreign at first (CTADHD, 2011). He also warns parents that not addressing the issues allow may disrupt the dynamic of the family. The child with EBD may end up taking more attention from their siblings, which is an unhealthy family practice. Families may also ignore the early signs or assume that the child will outgrow the problem (CTADHD, 2011). Instead of being negligent, the family should support these children and ensure they get the right attention and treatment within a reasonable time frame.
Similarities and Differences to Other Disabilities
EBD, Intellectual Disabilities (ID), and Learning Disabilities (LD) have been compared and contrasted by several pieces of research because of the characteristics they exhibit. The three disabilities show similar characteristics in academic development, social skills, and interpersonal relationships. While EBD has a prevalence of 6 to 10 percent, ID has a prevalence of 3-10 percent, and ID has less than 1 percent (Maturana et al., 2019). These disabilities share characteristics that also require similar accommodations and interventions, especially LREs. Children with LD are better placed in their homes during interventions (SKLD, 2018). ID and LD put more emphasis on timing, scheduling, and task preparations (McKenzie et al., 2016); (Padhy et al., 2015). LD also incorporates testing to stimulate the children’s mental activity while ID uses transitional planning to prepare children for adulthood.
Information Synthesis
Quantitative synthesis is necessary for the effective evaluation and the related outcomes of the tutor for the students who are having EBD or those at a high risk of getting the disorder. There is an examination of the effectiveness of the tutor as he was handling the EBD students. How effective the models were when promoting the desire of the EBD students. Mostly the behavior needs, as well as the academic needs of the students with this condition, are identified as the hardest to be handled by everyone, including the instructors. While addressing the situation needs effective academic planning as well as uses of instructional techniques that are used when handling the students with EBD. The technical skills are not costly to be acquired by the tutor is less since it takes a short period of the tutor to be taught, and also it requires a very short period of time. The tutor doesn’t need substantial training for them to start teaching. If the instructor is older than the student and the student responds positively, he is called a cross-age tutor, and such an instructor proves to be an effective tutor as well as having social skills for the students with disabilities, especially those with EBD. The instructor who used low or no cost to acquire the technique of the dealing with the students with EBD proves to be effective when delivering the instructions to the students since they may be given a command by their tutor as they practices as well as practice on their social, academic skills as well as behavior skills in the instructional context.
The social –behaviors, together with academic skills, are the main characterization of the needs of the students with EBD needs, and when cross-tutors are used, there is hope for the intervention when addressing EBD needs. According to research, peer tutoring, when dealing with social skills as well as behavior outcomes of the students with EBD, reduces disruptive characteristics, which in return increases the academic engagement of the students struggling with EBD. It was proven that cross-age is the best way to deal with the students with EBD issues than when a tutor is of the same age as the students, and even the vice versa is true.
The students have a disability called ADHD “Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder,” and there is an organization that deals with this condition it is called CHADD “Children and Adults with Attention-Deficient / Hyperactivity Disorder. The organization has the mission of improving the lives of the people who are affected by ADHD. The organization is not independent, and it is funded by CHADD, which is a diverse organization that is meant to bring diverse groups together that have people with different interests. These groups have something that is common about them, and that is the interest of addressing people suffering from ADHD. The organization is a vocal organization, and it deals largely with the issue of ADHD people. The organization receives donations from individuals and other organizations like Shire US as well as Novartis. The main target of the organization is the people who are affected by ADHD and their family and matters concerning their work performance. The organization takes care of the parents of the affected person and also the caregiver of the people who are affected by ADHD. CHADD helps in the educational field by training teachers who provide the skills to the students who are affected by ADHD.
In conclusion, the students dealing with EBD have academic needs them to have behavioral needs, and that makes them need special interventions. Instructors who are trained to deal with students with EBD needs, as well as issues, are needed in order to deal with the students on their academic as well as behavioral needs. Tutors with a good intervention from their tutor and the tutor need not be much trained all they need is an instructor who will command them so that they can be able to deal with the student dealing with EBD. The cross-tutors are regarded as the best teachers since they are able to deal well with the students better than the tutor who is younger than the students, and the vice versa is true.
References
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